With ESPN on board to spread the telecasts to a wider audience, the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas continued its march on becoming the strongest in-season college basketball tournament with the announcement of a loaded 2014 field that includes recent national champions North Carolina and Florida and perennial Pac-12 power UCLA.

The field also features teams that were in recent Final Fours including Butler (2010, 2011), Georgetown (2007), Oklahoma (2002) and Wisconsin (2000), which has finished fourth or better in every Big Ten Conference season under coach Bo Ryan. The only team in the field that does not have a Final Four to its credit since the turn of the century is UAB, which never has advanced beyond the Elite Eight.

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The Battle 4 Atlantis has been trying to supplant the Maui Invitational as the most prestigious in-season event, offering the luxury of a shorter—and often less expensive—flight from the U.S. mainland. There's also the matter of a full Division I field, as opposed to Maui's inclusion of tournament host Chaminade. Maui's advantage always had been ESPN's involvement as opposed to the less widely distributed NBC Sports Network, which carried Battle's biggest games this season. But ESPN is on board for the next three seasons. Instead of the event beginning on Thanksgiving Day and concluding on a Saturday, the event will move to a Wednesday-Friday format to keep it away from a loaded college football Saturday schedule.

The Battle 4 Atlantis games are played at the Atlantis resort's Imperial Arena. This year's champion was Villanova, which prevailed over a field that included ranked teams Kansas and Iowa as well as Tennessee, Xavier and UTEP.

The 2014 Maui field was announced last week and includes Arizona, Pitt, Purdue, San Diego State and Missouri.